light. He reached behind the bar, grabbed the first bottle of strong whiskey he saw, and kicked open the swinging door to the street. He was back on Hollywood Boulevard—exactly where he’d started.
Jack sat down on the curb and opened the bottle, taking a long pull. Everything hurt. It was an unfortunate side effect of slagging off things that were higher in the food chain than you, and he’d accepted it.
The whiskey was shit, and it burned all the way down, lighting his already upset stomach aflame. Jack scanned up and down the pavement, until he caught a kid in a tracksuit and a do-rag nodding against the front of the hipster bar. He might be white, and old, and straightened out, but he still knew a dealer by scent.
“Oi,” he said to the kid. “Need to borrow your mobile.”
“Fuck you,” the kid said promptly. “Go suck cock and buy your own, old man.”
Jack set the bottle down—it was shit booze, but it was all he had. He wrapped one hand around the green- tinged gold necklaces at the kid’s throat, and the other around his balls. He’d had to do this entirely too often lately, he thought. “I’m just going to borrow it,” he said, adding a squeeze for emphasis.
“
“I’m sure he’s a terrifying gent, and that I’m well and truly fucked, but right now I need to make a fucking phone call and you’re standing in my way,” Jack said. “So you can either be a helpful lad or a soprano. I really don’t care at this point. Not having the best of days.”
The kid considered for a moment, and then shook his head, pulling a gleaming smart phone from his tracksuit. “You’re a fuckin’ crazy white dude, aren’t you?” he said.
“Been accused of it, yes,” Jack said, and dialed Pete.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she said. “I thought you were dead. I’ve been driving circles around Los Angeles looking for your corpse.”
“I’m fine,” Jack said. “Need a lift, though, if you can manage it.”
“Is the car safe to drive now?” Pete asked. “I don’t fancy another go-round like at the garage. Where did you
“Hollywood and Van Nuys,” Jack said. “Thanks, luv.”
“Fuck you,” Pete told him. “Only doing this so I don’t have to claim your body at the morgue. Damned inconvenient.”
Jack polished off more of the whiskey while he waited, undisturbed by the dealer once he handed the mobile back. How he was going to explain this royal mess to Pete, he didn’t know. Maybe he could drink enough to forgo explaining anything, but that would take a lot more than one bottle of paint thinner disguised as booze.
He wasn’t about to blame Pete for all this, even though it was tempting—she’d done what she’d thought necessary in the moment. When things like Nergal loomed on the horizon, people got scared and stupid, made decisions they didn’t think they’d ever live to regret, because they wouldn’t be living at all.
Abbadon had said that Jack had made it all possible. He’d made his own decision, when he was in hell and the Morrigan had come to him. He had certainly never thought he’d live to regret that one. And now the regret was all over him, under his skin.
Jack looked at his own hand gripping the whiskey bottle, at the black curlicues that terminated just short of his knuckles. It wasn’t ink—it was part of him, or part of the Morrigan that was in him. The thing that had only manifested as sight and Death dogging his steps tenaciously before now was visible, telling anyone who cared that Jack Winter was inexorably bound to the mistress of death and destruction.
He was pissed enough for there to be a warm buzz in his skull when the Fury rumbled to the curb, but at least it shut up the persistent circle-jerk of whispers inside his skull.
“Jesus, Jack,” Pete said, jumping out of the car and crouching beside him.
“Not him,” Jack said. “Wager I could take on that bloke. Pacifistic and shit, wasn’t he?”
Pete took his arm and Jack let himself be pulled along and installed in the back seat. Between the thumping he’d taken and the whiskey, he was ready to fall asleep for a decade or two and wake up when everyone had a jetpack and nobody gave a fuck about Jack Winter.
“I’m not going to ask where you got off to or what happened,” Pete said as she put the car in gear. “But if you don’t want another bruise or two in the collection, you’re going to tell me once you stop stinking like a transient who sleeps outside a distillery.”
“Fair enough,” Jack mumbled. He tried not to drift off, tried to stall the dream that had to be coming by counting the turns the Fury made. “We can’t go back to Venice,” he said. “They know Mayhew.”
“I made arrangements,” Pete said. “You concentrate on not bleeding on the seats.”
“Figure this heap is ours now,” Jack said. “Seeing as Sal’s not on the side of angels.” This wasn’t his sight or a spell—this was just tired, a fatigue he never would have felt even five years ago.
“Thought there were no angels,” Pete said. Jack’s eyes fluttered closed, and he couldn’t prop them up any longer. He was going under, and he’d just have to hold his breath.
“Not in this world, luv,” he mumbled, before the hot, dry wind filled his lungs, and he was back in Hell.
CHAPTER 18
Belial kept a hand on his shoulder, almost constantly. He never spoke above a whisper, but Jack heard every word. Belial knew he would—his sight echoed, and his skull split and re-formed again and again as the demon hissed into his ear. They walked every inch of Hell, Jack’s bare feet blistering and rotting as cinder and offal worked their way in.
“I want you to see,” Belial whispered. “I want you to see what Hell is, Jack. The vast majesty of it. See it and know that from now until we all fall into a star, this is your home.”
He ran his sharp nails along the back of Jack’s neck. “This is your fate.”
The demon’s lips brushed his earlobe. “This is where you belong.”
Pete nudged him, and Jack saw an alley, brick buildings reaching to block out the bleached sky. Cars and people sounds moved past the mouth, but it was silent and shaded, much like the alley next to his flat at home.
Was it his home? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d been unceremoniously chucked out of a city he’d once considered friendly. But London was different. London was the only spot where he could sleep, without dreams. The only spot he’d allowed roots to reach below the surface. He knew the Black there. Everywhere else was the Wild West.
“Come on,” Pete said. “Your creepy friend from the bar said we could lay low for a few days.”
“Sliver?” Jack got out of the Fury and tried lifting his arms. A dozen knives, from his skull to his knees, stabbed him for his trouble. He twisted the kinks from his back, trying not to gasp as his tender ribs vibrated.
“Yeah, him.” Pete grabbed her bag, his kit, and a disintegrating cardboard box from the trunk. “What’s wrong with his face?”
“For a wraith, nothing,” Jack said. “He’s an all right sort.”
Pete shouldered open a metal door marked FIRE EXIT ONLY. Considering that it was propped open with a cinder block, Jack figured the building either had a lot of fires, or had stopped worrying about the eventuality.
“We never have any normal friends,” she said.
“Normal’s overrated,” Jack said. The door swung shut and only a single bar of light illuminated the metal staircase, leading up and up. He smelled piss and stale air, and pulled Pete behind him. “Let me,” he said. The Black here was like smoke curls from a candle just snuffed—thin and ethereal, the boundaries of the daylight world worn to practically nothing.
On the one hand, Abbadon and his merry band of freaks would have a hard time finding them in the swirling hotspot of magic. On the other hand, anything could be lurking in the dark and his sight would only hear the static of the nexus.
“Fine,” Pete muttered, shoving the box at him. “Take this, then.”
Jack accepted the burden, and saw in the slice of sunlight that Pete was pale, with sweat beading on her forehead. “You all right, luv?”
